Introduction

cmdline_tweet is a simple Python application that allows you to send messages to a Twitter account from the command line. It extends on the examples from Jeff Miller's tutorial on the subject by improving reusability since the same tool handles both authorization and tweeting.

This tool allows you to create command-line programs tied to a single Twitter account with all the authorization, etc., handled behind the scenes.

Setup

Using cmdline_tweet first requires registering an app with Twitter to obtain an OAuth consumer key and secret. This is a one-time step, so just open up tweet.py and replace __CONSUMER_KEY__ and __CONSUMER_SECRET__ with your strings and forget about it.

The included Makefile may be used to bundle tweet.py into a standalone binary with PyInstaller, and only requires specifying the paths to PyInstaller and the Python executable on your system. Having standalone binaries can be helpful when deploying to machines without Python installed.

Usage

Each script/executable is tied to a single Twitter account, and all it does is send a tweet on behalf of that account. This can be useful for server logs or monitoring other automated processes. Or, simply issuing tweets without leaving the comfort of the shell environment.

When first run, the program checks for a configuration file with the same name and path as itself. For instance, if the script was /path/to/tweet.py, then it would look for /path/to/tweet.py.cfg. If that file is invalid or can't be found, then the program opens up a browser window for you to authorize it with your Twitter credentials. Once that step is complete, tweeting is as simple as:

./tweet.py "All your base are belong to us"

If everything succeeds, the tweet will be posted and the script exits with no output. If there was an error (e.g. repeat tweet, network failure), it will be printed to standard output. Deleting the .cfg file or renaming the executable will re-trigger the setup process. This makes it possible to have several scripts which tweet to different accounts live side-by-side without conflict.

If you'll be using the script in a headless/server environment, you'll want to copy the .cfg file from another machine with web browsing capabilities.

Dependencies

• Python >= 2.7 (only minor changes required for further compatibility)
• tweepy

TODO

Ideas for future improvement:

• Better backwards/forwards compatibility
• Have Makefile call sed to replace the appropriate, app-specific params?
• Integrate consumer key/secret into config file instead of hard-coding?
• Tweet to multiple accounts with same script/executable? (e.g. ./tweet.py ACCTNAME MESSAGE)